Iz 🌟

'Ich Komme' is great. Either that or 'Aina' would be a great rep. Feels weird not advocating for Finland to send rock for once but their style of music is so unique that it's good to see all genres taking a turn.

Alexander's obviously in a bit of a tough position, but he was emotionally intelligent enough to gather a small number of people to back him before the round table, probably keeping more votes from going his way, and he dealt with Leanne very respectfully and correctly, must be the diplomat experience. I don't have huge confidence in this bunch to keep him but I hope he survives a long time as one of the few Faithfuls worth rooting for. Now Fozia's gone of course, shame that chance knocked her out of the game to keep the rather dull Leon in (was very aggrieved at the NUMEROUS talking heads of players saying 'omg I hope Leon's not dead, he's our bestie, hope it's one of those awful newbies', continuing to do everything possible to make me dislike them by continuing the cliquey behaviour). Good run for Linda honestly, she came in, gave us some iconic moments, didn't outstay her welcome. Hope Charlotte accepts and they kill one of the awful bunch.

Israel and Hamas have agreed a ceasefire 'in principle' @1879574731835191472 early days but first steps towards peace is good

A8jnHa-GjN0 this may surprise people but I... do not like this. Always been against countries typecasting themselves too hard and while fun and rock, what Finland has been doing lately is very easy to typecast, and also this song in particular is just a pretty bad representation of Euro-metalcore. team VIIVI so far, but really Erika waiting room to see if she can beat 'Puppy' tX04m1FyW4o

gone through all of these a couple of times and if either 'Armageddon' or 'Kulm' wins I'll be incredibly happy. Could be convinced by 'mai ei tea sind' or Anna Sahlene if either faction wants me, no thx at Tommy Cash. also have to rep 'Solo Anthem' for being great fun but that's not winning ever

Showcase, very convenient to get to for me in my town, just a short drive in the car. Always been a roomy cinema and good value if you go on Monday nights with their Insider programme - I saw Nosferatu there last night. Depends where I am of course, I went to Cineworld over Christmas as that was the one that had the film we wanted to see while at my parents.

@1878771463311769686 right I'm anti-Starmer now ~ seriously though generally tech innovation is good and the AI opportunities list lots of things that are not LLMs in many industries that greater computing power will help in, plus it's good to regulate with regards to these things anyway,

@1878551843858493885 a populist leftist democratic leader with unbelievable approval ratings ~

I imagine the final round will either be one drawn out 50/50 with an arguably unfair advantage for to the choosing player who can look for eye movements in the defending player, or an intervention happens - maybe the Traitors get to choose to murder one and give an ultimatum to the other. Reasoning why the latter would work: there kind of needs to be a third Traitor added - not that they can't function with these numbers but there isn't much Traitor-on-Traitor drama with just Minah and Linda and I'm starting to genuinely believe the meta game theory that a number of players know it's Linda and are keeping her, instead voting off any Faithful who acts a bit out of turn, so she isn't replaced by another Traitor they have no idea about. There's no real point of getting rid of Traitors before the halfway mark if the production will just add more in - but an unexpected ultimatum is a way from the producers to shake that strategy up.

Very true that being a tastemaker doesn't get the right incentives from music commentary - always thought that every year the BBC gets it wrong and the winner ends up doing nothing significant commercially (even if in most cases they still get critical acclaim) leads to people criticising the poll as irrelevant - and that's the case with a lot of the recent winners. Problem of it being a poll that's associated with success as opposed to being an award - Mercury Prize or BRITs can just give it to whichever act and album is the best from their point of view - and that the mainstream that would be considered success is just really hard to break into from any act that is outside the norm, hence why lots of the recent winners ended up 'flopping', they were never going to be mainstream popular. I can see why they did it and it'll probably pay off for them more in the long run - next year they can say 'Chappell Roan won it last year' and that's the prestige there.

Yeah, this is the correct approach. Local inquiries where it won't impact the pursuance of justice elsewhere, not party political and most importantly not halting other protections for children being enshrined into law at the same time.

The scariest thing about this issue is how dominant misinformation is right now. You have newspapers and Twitter posters up and down the country swearing blind that Starmer said that anyone concerned about the grooming gangs were far-right - all he said, correctly, was that a far-right bandwagon had amplified misinformation around this issue. And then they go on to prove him right by twisting his words further.

Inquiries delay action. Action may be halted because the results of the inquiries may differ. In fact the end result of this insanity might be Labour strongarmed into commissioning another inquiry that proceeds to spend years to tell us what we all already know ready for it to come back in 2028 as a 'new and unresolved issue'. That poll is not credible, it may have been undertaken by YouGov but was commissioned by a think tank associated by UnHerd/Goodwin and it's laughably easy to get 76% of people to respond in the affirmative to a question that boils down to 'should you do something about rape gangs?' when you present an inquiry as the thing to be done.

Company Culture is an incredible punk tune, love the lyrics on that and the other tracks I've heard so far no idea why they haven't been on my radar before

moved for you hey i might get around to taking part in some of these polls with genre expansion, J-Brekkie at least was on my list of things to listen to

Ideally they'd take out Livi, no more entertainment value out of her staying, but I worry that the smart play for the Traitors is taking out Fozia, an astute player who could very easily root out Linda if not Minah too. Which I would love to see happen. Both Fozia and Alexander look like they'd be much better at this than the original crop of Faithless, for the most part. That said, enjoyable enough tonight that Freddie (with a bit of help from Minah) masterminded the easiest player to get gone, Tyler, out by just a few seeds of doubt in his friend group. He's got a few skills.

Though I am living for Liz Truss choosing this moment to stick her oar in and claim she'll sue the PM for saying she 'crashed the economy' - good luck with that.

@1877323717283364985 ... anti-democratic nonsense

? cool it with the vague conspiracyposting, it's neither helpful nor conducive to debate Anyone who says this was Labour politicians voting against a national inquiry is lying to you. It's Conservatives trying to crash a bill that should stop atrocities like the Sharif case from happening again with its greater protections for children.

It's disgusting political theatre and I'm already seeing rags with headlines like 'Labour vote down national grooming inquiry' - and all this to only call on the government to do an inquiry, not actually force one to start. It's the definition of writing meaningless political charadery into law - on a Bill that is actually going to give greater protections for children now.

apparently known for making gaming music of some description? looks laddish metalcore band with inexplicable japanese fanbase my beloved all things I'm hearing about this sound like it's a moment

No one involved in this is saying that the victims of these horrific assaults don't deserve justice, and the court cases and justice will continue, in fact I believe Yvette Cooper is announcing her plan for taking it forward this evening. What isn't helpful is the army of online trolls who don't care for justice and want to use this as a stick to beat 'tolerance' with. None of these people care about justice, well, some may think they do, but these people were silent on the Pelicot trial, they were silent about any number of abuses committed by white men. But all that aside, these are not credible people and the government shouldn't be dignifying them with engaging with them. It is an outrage that people's safety may be put at risk by online vigilantes who want to skip the proper processes and spread misinformation. Starmer's right to call that out. Besides, he was there to talk about the NHS, so it's understandable that his response on this was on what's currently been in the news, not the ongoing work of government.

Impactful as one of the last major liberal democratic pre-COVID leaders - only Macron left now really, if you don't count Trump returning. Suspect he's trying to do this as a gambit to maybe avoid the Conservatives in Canada winning the next election - like in New Zealand though, not really sure it will work.

I'd also add that there have been many inquiries into this topic and this long after the incidents I am sceptical at how much value new inquiries will add, as ever, inquiries often end up delaying action, the issue is actually implementing their recommendations and clearing up outstanding cases. ...but you yourself did not respond to anything he said at all, just continued bashing him for the reasons you already dislike him. What have these victims said, because I have not been able to see that reported anywhere? So these are tragedies Starmer is not responsible for nor has perpetrated, while his I/P stance is not as pro-Palestine as it should be he's been reasonably balanced about it and unlike Biden it's not like his aid is allowing Israel to continue. It's also just kind of ridiculous to call him responsible for the grooming gangs scandal as a chief prosecutor who came into that office with a backlog, worked to bring down that backlog in his time as DPP, was responsible for locking up hundreds of abusers, and now his government is about to start action into unresolved cases caused by previous Conservative governments dragging their feet over the many completed inquiries that have been done already. Absurd for anyone to say he's on the wrong side of this issue. I really think it's ridiculous to be harping on this kind of thing, particularly the exaggeration of 'most profound in my lifetime', no it isn't, they're just two significant cases with many victims where the important thing is to go after the perpetrators, not the managers of institutions trying to fix things. It just feels unnuanced and ridiculous to claim he is responsible for them in the same way Blair was responsible for a war he was a major party to. I can see where someone might be coming from on Gaza, but I wouldn't expect reasonable people to hold Starmer responsible for either tragedy, only uncharitable political enemies. In any case, and I say this to everyone, I fully agree with the below and hope it's a turned corner for Starmer, this speech was a huge improvement on rhetoric and one should watch if the quoted words above weren't enough: @1876226248881721704 As much as I have political disagreements with him, we need him to be strong and steadfast in government when faced with the threat of far-right misinformation spreaders (cue liam sota arguing 'you can't call anyone who disagrees with you far-right' like a personification of the Daily Mail comment section) who would see him replaced in government by some Faragist dystopia. Similarly, from Gordon Brown: The people bringing this issue into national conversation again aren't doing it for the right reasons and their demands are not the way to get justice.

one imagines that when one is in a responsible position like the sole owner of a major company that if you make statements implying that the strongest military in the world should invade and coup one of its closest allies one should face consequences, but what do I know